


Corrosion

by Ringshadow



Series: Trickster Souls [5]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012), The Sentinel
Genre: Abandon All Hope, Afghanistan memories, Alternate Universe - Sentinels and Guides Are Known, Discussion of abuse and death of young teens, Getting to know you, Guide Powers, Healing, Hope for the future, Justin Hammer feels, Justin can actually sorta cook, Justin's parents are assholes, M/M, Sentinel Senses, Sentinel reeducation camp, Shared Dreams, Sleepy Cuddles, Swearing, They still haven't kissed, seriously this hurt to write, tw: child abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-10
Updated: 2013-08-10
Packaged: 2017-12-23 00:24:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/919801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ringshadow/pseuds/Ringshadow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Justin and Tony's relationship ends up in the news, and Justin talks about what happened to him when he was young.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Corrosion

Justin was tired, but it still wasn’t lost on him that he was starting to walk in Tony’s house from habit. He was retreating to the guest bedroom, Tony walking with him, and had just stepped into the room when he saw Tony looking at him with an expression he couldn’t read.

 

“Come to bed. Please?”

 

A few weeks ago, hearing that from any guy would have made him sputter. Now he just nodded, stepping into the bathroom to change and brush his teeth before following Tony to the master bedroom. He turned the bed down while Tony got ready, setting his glasses on the bedside table and curling up. Then Tony had rolled on the bed, cheerfully moving one of his arms and tucking close, slipping under his shields as he did. He let tony in with a weary smile.

 

/happy/content/

 

Tony pushed in close, and the noise rumbled up from somewhere deep in Justin’s chest even as he dozed, a sentinel purr murmuring for a few minutes.

 

/mine/happy/

 

Their minds leaning into each other, they slept.

 

* * *

 

The dream confused Justin. He had read somewhere that the sleeping mind cannot invent faces, so everyone seen in a dream was someone the dreamer had seen. These faces? Strange to him. The location? A nightmarish dark cave. But he knows he’s dreaming so it was easy to change the situation, just a little, get a gun and flashlight into his hands and start trying to find Tony.

 

Who he eventually found kneeling over the body of a nebbish looking man, Tony’s face broken and sorrowful.

 

Nightmare. Afghanistan. Kidnapped.

 

“Tony.” Justin stepped over, and his guide startled, looking up at him in confusion. “So, we share dreams.”

 

“Fuck.” Tony rubbed his face, then stood with the man in his arms. “…Had to leave him.”

 

Justin looked around at the nightmare, and decided fuck Afghanistan.

 

They partied with Yinsen in the Bahamas for the rest of the dream.

* * *

 

Tony woke up first, and realized he wasn’t going anywhere unless Justin moved. They were entirely tangled with each other. He stayed still, blinking in the early morning haze and just taking it all in, the remnants of the dream still clinging. He usually dreaded sleep. Maybe now he had a guard at the gates.

 

He was still under Justin’s shields, and when he closed his eyes and looked he could see the ‘mountain lodge’ that Justin had set up as his imaginary mental fortress. It was still night, there, complete with whirring night bugs and wind. Tony sighed, pulling back and stretching out as much as he could, and Justin stirred against him, sunrise starting inside his head.

 

“Morning?” Justin hazarded. “Did we dream?”

 

“Yeah, I think we did.” Tony got himself loose and sat up, yawning. “I’ll start some coffee. Get up, lazybones.”

 

“Ngh, fine.” He rolled and fell off the bed, sitting blinking on the floor tangled in the blanket and accepting his glasses from Tony. “Thanks.”

 

Tony laughed and helped untangle Justin from the blanket then they both wandered out, Justin heading for the guest shower and Tony going to the kitchen to start coffee. “JARVIS? Morning news, please.”

 

“Certainly sir.” The screen nearest the kitchen came on, and Tony loaded the coffee machine, humming to himself. “Sir, there’s a news story you might want to hear.”

 

“Bring it up.” Tony had found muffins from the previous day’s shopping and was just biting into one as the channel changed, and he almost choked.

 

He was still standing there when Justin appeared, in jeans and a borrowed shirt, hair still damp from the shower. “Figured you’d be in the shower by now.” Justin remarked, going to the coffee machine with single minded intent.

 

“We’re in the news.”

 

Justin paused halfway through pouring himself a mug, looking up to see his face slowly. “More shit about the rehab rumors?”

 

“No, it would seem an ‘anonymous tip’ from a ‘source close to Tony Stark’ has leaked our relationship to the media so they’re flogging the what-ifs into the ground.” Tony put his face in his hands and moaned, then looked up again when Justin started gently jumping his hands with a filled coffee mug. “Thanks.”

 

“Go get ready for the day. You’ll think more clearly once clean and dressed.”

 

He stared at Justin, who was mixing raw sugar into his coffee. “You’re oddly calm about this.”

 

“Oh, I could lose my shit, break a few windows and kick the local seabirds into jelly but it won’t magically suck the broadcast off the airwaves, right?” Justin wanted to know. “This shit? This was a power play.” He smirked. “You step into my house you best be ready to get messed up. The best revenge is success.  Now, off with you.”

 

Tony stared at him for a moment then gave up arguing, taking his coffee and wandering off to shower. He was rinsing out his hair when the obvious hit him and he screamed “God fucking dammit!” at the top of his lungs. “JARVIS? Call Bethany Schumaker.” He hung at the door of his shower, shoving his hair out of his eyes and listening to the phone ring on overhead then a sunny voice pick up, and he felt his lip curl. “Bethany.”

 

“Oh so now you call me back, Anthony.” She replied, sounding exactly like sunshine-filled poison.

 

“Did you tip off the press?”

 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She simpered.

 

He rubbed his eyes with one hand. “Lying evil bitch.”

 

“Excuse me?”

 

“You heard me. Someone told the press and you are one of two people not employed by the government who knew.”

 

“Your fault for telling me that after rejecting me.” She replied acerbically. 

 

“JARVIS, hang up.” He snapped, cutting the water off and storming out of the shower. He was upstairs five minutes later, in a tank top and jeans, only to find Pepper there talking to Justin. “It was Bethany.”

 

“Obviously.” Pepper replied without missing a beat. “Which one was Bethany?”

 

“Sentinel, poodle spirit animal, horrible fake tits.” Justin was standing at a waffle iron.

 

“I have a waffle iron?” Tony was derailed. “Don’t I just buy waffles?”

 

“Those aren’t waffles, those are cardboard abominations.” Justin replied. “And I’m hungry. And you have whipped cream and fruit.”

 

“Right, right.” He appropriated a new cup of coffee. “Morning, Pepper.”

 

“Tony.” She smiled at him. “Today’s going to be rough.”

 

“We weren’t really ready to go to the press with this, yet.” Justin admitted. “We’re not bonded. I just got licensed yesterday, for fuck’s sake.”

 

“I can issue a press statement. That should calm the media with any luck. The company is something else entirely.”

 

“Which is why you run it. You’re better at this than I ever was.” Tony said, sitting at the counter next to her. “Are some of those waffles mine?”

 

“Yes, and some are Pepper’s if she wants.” Justin replied. “I agree, a press statement should be released at bare minimum. It’ll buy us a day, maybe two before we have to get in front of the cameras. The lawyers already know what’s up, so certain things are already in motion.” The light on the waffle iron went out and he opened it, neatly flipping two waffles onto two plates and sliding one to Tony.

 

“I thought you couldn’t cook.”

 

“This isn’t cooking, this is one step above using a microwave.”

 

Pepper passed Tony the can of whipped cream before he asked for it. “There’s been a lot of questions about you, Mr. Hammer, as there’s no record of you being a sentinel.”

 

There was a long relative silence in the kitchen as he reloaded the waffle maker and closed it, and scattered blueberries and powdered sugar on his own waffle before just folding it in half and picking it up, taking a bite. “No point in lying.” He said once he’d swallowed. “Let’s just be honest about it. Are you the one writing the release?”

 

“That’s the current plan.”

 

“Tell them that I am a victim of religious-based rehabilitation programming that left me virtually crippled, and that it’s only been with the support of Tony that I’ve been able to finally start recovering.”

 

Tony stole the blueberries and made a checkerboard pattern across his waffle before cutting into it. “I’ve wanted to ask you about that.” He admitted. “While you were in withdrawal I did some reading. Some of the victims were claiming shit like waterboarding and solitary confinement.”

 

Justin paused mid-chew, then roughly swallowed and set his folded waffle down, gripping the edge of the counter and staring down fixedly. “Not at the place I was sent. But they did hit us. They caned us.”

 

“Look, if you don’t want to talk about this…”

 

“You should know. I don’t mind if Pepper hears it, she has every right to know what she’s going to be working with.” He grabbed one of the stools and pulled it around, sitting and leaning his elbows on the counter, staring at the waffle iron so he wouldn’t have to look at either of them. “I was almost thirteen when I was officially diagnosed as a sentinel, but I’d been dealing with it since I was nine or ten. It didn’t all onset at once.”

 

“I was twelve when I broke through. I’m three years older than you.” Tony nodded. “So that makes sense.”

 

Justin nodded once. “I didn’t think anything of it. Yeah it was weird. Sometimes it gave me an advantage on the playground, sometimes it gave me a disadvantage. I was almost thirteen when my complaints of headaches and ‘dizzy spells’ got too much for my parents to deal with so they took me to the doctor.  The doctor gave me a normal physical then gave me an eye test with really small lettering at great distance and asked me if I could focus on it if I tried hard. I could. He kicks my parents out of the room, calls in a colleague, half an hour later I have the official instructional brochures in my hands. ‘So you’re a Sentinel’, you know, with the proud stick figure standing out from the others with rays of light around it.”

 

Pepper nodded. “It’s Keith Haring artwork. Pretty famous.” When she saw the look Justin gave her, she grinned.  “Tony has the original, or had before he donated the entire collection to the Boy Scouts.” She gave Tony a look.

 

“I was dying!” He said defensively. “Sorry, Justin, continue if you want.”

 

“Well, my parents flipped out. Religious, preacher didn’t approve. So they took me to another doctor for a second opinion. Who was able to confirm in, like, twenty minutes. Dad dragged me out of there and told me that he’d heard of a place that could fix me. I told him the doctors said there’s nothing wrong with me. Dad screamed about Jesus and souls the whole way home, I didn’t even listen. Got packed off to camp as soon as the school year was up.” He took a sip of his coffee, closed his eyes and sucked a breath in. “It was hell on earth.”

 

There was a few moments of silence, during which he unloaded the waffles and reloaded the maker before closing it again, offering those two to Pepper who politely declined, so he just left them on that plate. His stomach ached with hunger in spite of the pain of the story, so he took a few bites and forced them down before speaking again.

 

“The camp itself didn’t seem too bad, you know? Lots of other kids, most from similar backgrounds. The cabins seemed nice enough, there were kayaks and sports fields. None of us knew really why we were there, all of us were sentinels or guides. When we came in a camp employee has us unpack in front of them and they made a list of everything we had with us, and that was kind of weird. They told us it was so they wouldn’t get accused of theft. Evening of the first day, during dinner, they tell us. That we were sent here because we were possessed by demons and they were going to free us from our burden.”

 

Justin stopped to eat and sip more coffee, not looking at Tony and Pepper, who were sitting unmoving, staring at him.

 

“Not all the kids believed it you know?” Justin glanced up at them. “That it was wrong. But some of the kids had ate that hook line and sinker, so the people running that camp spent the first few days getting under our skin and finding the kids who thought they were wrong because of what they were. Then they used those kids to narc on the rest of us. See, we all saw each other’s spirit animals, those of us that were old enough or had connected with them anyway, so the kids who were ‘in on it’ would narc about the kids trying to resist. And I resisted. I thought my parents had lost their minds. I believed the doctors that had told me that I was normal. I didn’t feel evil, or possessed, or demonic, I felt like me and sometimes it sucked but sometimes it was awesome. But they’re my parents you know? My fucking parents sent me to that hellhole. That shit feels like the death of all hope, that kind of ultimate god damn betrayal.”

 

“It is a betrayal.” Tony said after a long pause. “They sent you somewhere to be mistreated. It’s most definitely betrayal and a violation of trust.”

 

He looked away again. “See, these absolute assholes, they had their own beliefs about all this. They all absolutely thought that if they cut off our spirit animals and ‘filled us with faith’ we'd be ‘normal little boys and girls’ inside a year. So they worked us over to try to make that happen. They’d yell at us and guilt us and berate us. If we talked back we got a switch across the shoulders.  There was to be no dissenting opinion. What the doctors told us did not matter in this place. We were wrong, and they would fix us, and we had to ‘give up the hold on the demon animal’ and praise god and on and on. But that’s not easy. It’s sabotaging your own brain and soul and it fucking hurts… or worse.  There was this older girl. I mean looking back she was the figure of rebellion because she'd gone goth too. They took away her black clothes and gave her these stupidass dresses to wear and she tore out the collars and drew on them with marker. It was, like, beggar Alice in Wonderland. She resisted but... looking back, I think she had other issues, like, depression maybe. She had a squirrel. Only person I ever saw with a non-realistic spirit animal. It was a cartoon. ...I don’t know what they did to her. We heard screams and got in through a back door. She was on the ground seizing, they were calling for the camp doctor and trying to keep us away. They told us she'd gotten sick and was sent home. We all knew she died."

 

“Oh god.” Pepper had one of her hands up to her mouth, just staring at him.

 

“And that drove an even bigger rift between the kids. The angry little shits like me kicking and screaming on the way down and the little perfect ponces with agony eyes. We believed, we knew, she was dead. They believed the counselors, that she’d just been sent home. So the kids rebelling really dug in and started resisting any way we could. A few all out bolted. One kid actually successfully ran, I guess there was a sentinel school that kept an eye on the place and grabbed the girl, only know that much because the camp counselors tried to scare us with it. Adult demons kidnapping kids away. A few kids tried to hunger strike, and suddenly not finishing your meal would turn into being caned. It was systematic. The more you resisted, the more they took away. They’d take everything you brought with you, give you issued clothes. They’d strip your meals down to basics. They’d isolate you.”

 

“This is torture.” Tony said slowly. “This is preplanned, malicious torture of children.” He reached out, grabbed one of Justin’s hands and opening up to him, wincing and gripping Justin’s hand tight at the

/sorrow/regret/rage/confusion/exhaustion/

That rippled off his sentinel. Everything in Justin, in spite of being an adult and knowing logically why this had happened, still questioned why. Why he’d been sent away and butchered up inside.

 

Justin managed a very weak smile, squeezing Tony’s hand back and using it for support, watching their faces and honestly shocked at how pained they both looked. “And I’m like, fuck it right? I’m what, thirteen. They’re bullies, they’re stupid BULLIES, right? I stopped talking to them. Went silent passive aggressive. Tried not to listen. And one person resisting gave the other people resisting someone to lean on. They moved our cabins. They separated us. The narc kids would rag on us day after fucking day. Weeks passed like this. One by one, we burnt out or broke or just quit trying.” He sucked in a breath. “How did it end for me? Well, I refused to hurt my coyote but I guess that shit’s indirect. Damage to me is damage to him. I was already in deep shit because I’d snapped and screamed at one of the counselors and tried to start a fight with one of the narcs. Then my coyote comes limping in like a car crash victim and I lunged and started screaming at it to run and keep running and not come back."

 

“Trying to protect it?” Pepper asked. “By sending it away.”

 

Justin nodded, feeling just tired and used up.  “Started this huge row with the counselors, who ended up deciding since I was on the ground in shock, I’d banished the thing. Fucking idiots. I got left alone after, mostly. That was worse because I got rendered to observer. Didn’t speak to my parents after for a long, long time, and they were all ‘oh it’s okay if you're quiet they told us recovery is normal and a lot of kids find peace in silence.’ I wore headphones a lot. Drowned them out with all the ‘devil’ music I could get my hands on. Of course by the time I got to college I was almost irrevocably crippled. Tried to stay shut down because it was like being surrounded by people screaming in Arabic or something, overload on shit I had no capacity to understand. And … that’s been my life. Terrified of this, of what I am, because it’s been nothing but pain.”

 

“And then me.” Tony said blankly.

 

The smile Justin gave him was timid, but real, squeezing his hand again then pulling away to serve up two more waffles. “And then you, Mr. Tony Stark, who held me tight and made me listen. It’s still scary as all hell, but you know? These past few days I’ve felt better than I have in years. I’ve been walking around in a fog for decades, and now that’s finally lifted.” He squared up his shoulders. “I wonder what I can build now that I can actually see.”

 

* * *

 

Justin stayed quiet for a while after that, and Tony figured he had every right to be a bit withdrawn after spilling all that old pain. He hashed out the rest of the press conference with Pepper, who said she’d be holding the conference herself later that afternoon so she’d have control over the message and wording. Tony approved and managed to thank her and apologize in the same breath, which was pretty much old hat between them.

 

Then he was sitting watching Justin clean up the kitchen, his sentinel having ate half a dozen waffles with fruit and powdered sugar (the calorie counter on the window making little ‘ding’ noises as it rolled over with each one and broke a thousand by the time Justin was done). His sentinel ignored it, seeming content to pass out on a chaise lounge outside afterwards in a breakfast-induced languor.  Somehow, it made Tony smile.

 

He ended up spending the remarkably quiet day doing research, looking up information to see what recovery groups there were for what Justin had gone through and finding, to his shock, there wasn’t a large official group. Lots of small regional groups, online stuff, sentinel/guide schools giving classes, recommended therapists, unofficial support networks. So he did the only sensible thing and had JARVIS email all of the regional groups, schools, and therapists, explaining who he was and what he wanted to do.

 

He’d just finished fiddling with a logo, listening to music on the couch and waiting for Pepper’s press conference to come on, when Justin wandered in from outside. “Hey. Feel better?”

 

“I don’t know why that took so much out of me.” Justin fell onto the couch.

 

“I still don’t talk about Afghanistan. Hell I don’t talk about my father if I can help it.” Tony mumbled, turning his tablet and showing what he was working on. It was a black circle with a ghostly squirrel, that had earphones around its neck and an MP3 player in its paws, the lettering around the edge reading ‘Allison’s Army.’

 

“What?” Justin said, staring at it.

 

“I found the girl. The goth chick you said died. Her name was Allison.” Tony shuffled the display, bringing up a picture of her, watching Justin actually clap both hands to his mouth, eyes going bright with old sorrow. “There’s a website that memorializes deaths attributed to these camps. Not shocking, people do the same with Scientology.” He brought the logo back up. “You said she had a squirrel, and you said you wore headphones a lot after. I’m starting a support network so people like you will be able to find resources easier.”

 

Justin took the tablet and stared at it, before looking back at him. “How do you have room for such a big heart around that beacon in your chest, Stark?”

 

Tony grinned and moved, wrapping his arms around Justin and pulling him in, leaning his chin on his sentinel’s shoulder. “It’s a tight fit.” He admitted. Totally true, the reactor put pressure on his lungs and heart.

 

“It’s sad that it’s still necessary. But it’s a remarkable thing to do. Thank you.” He hugged back, pulling Tony in under his shields and leaning his mind close to his guide’s, relaxing out.

 

Eventually they shifted just to lean on each other, Tony showing Justin how the drawing software on his tablet worked until Pepper came on.


End file.
